“Inspiring Technology: 34 Breakthroughs”: Download IEEE’s 140th anniversary book for FREE.

Close bar

Slideshow: A Day in the Life of Digi-Key

With a million products in its catalog, the global electronics distributor caters to hobbyists, design engineers, and manufacturers alike

1 min read
Slideshow: A Day in the Life of Digi-Key
Photo: Gregg Segal

Photo: Gregg Segal
AWAY WE GO: Once an order has been picked and packed, the last stop before it leaves the Digi-Key facility is the shipping bay. UPS and FedEx both have employees on-site to scan in packages and load them directly into air-freight containers or onto delivery trucks. From the Thief River Falls airport, FedEx flies directly to its global “superhub” in Memphis, Tenn., while UPS flies to its main hub in Louisville, Ky. Domestic deliveries can be in customers’ hands the same day, while those bound for Western Europe or Japan take about 48 hours on average; customers in China can expect a turnaround of about 60 hours.

In the 42 years since its founding, Digi-Key Corp. has grown—and grown—into one of the world’s largest electronic-component distributors. Its online catalog features nearly a million parts and products. Last year it sold US $1.6 billion worth of merchandise to more than half a million customers in 170 countries. And the vast majority of Digi-Key’s offerings are kept in stock, available for immediate shipping, in a single place: the company’s 74 000-square-meter warehouse.

That enormous warehouse sits on the southwestern edge of the tiny town of Thief River Falls, Minnesota (population 8661). The nearest city is Grand Forks, N.D., hardly a metropolis. The warehouse operates around the clock, 365 days a year, with the result that any order placed by 8 p.m. local time gets shipped out the same day.

Digi-Key, like its archrival Mouser Electronics, caters to both corporate clients and hobbyists. The company will gladly sell you a Xilinx Virtex-7 field-programmable gate array for $39 452.40, but it will also sell you a single 10-cent through-hole resistor.

And then there’s the customer service. When you call Digi-Key’s toll-free number, an actual person answers, usually within 5 seconds. From there, you’ll be guided expertly, even if you have no idea what you need, even if all you’re getting is that 10-cent resistor, even if you speak Chinese, Hindi, or Portuguese. In an age of impersonal e-commerce, of voice mail that never gets returned, of languishing on hold, the experience of being a Digi-Key customer can seem almost surreal.

About the Photographer

Gregg Segal, an award-winning photographer based in the Los Angeles area, specializes in what he calls the environmental portrait: photographs taken “in a place that tells something about the person.” Segal’s other work for IEEE Spectrum includes portraits of SpaceX engineer Brandon Pearce and of computer-savvy bonobo apes.

 

The Conversation (0)